


First do no harm

by Kodawari



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, Introspection, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), post Endgame, remembering, sorta post endgame?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 10:37:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18715333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kodawari/pseuds/Kodawari
Summary: "His heart is held in a box. He must keep it under lock and key lest it gets the best of him. It unsteadies his touch in the operation of fate..."The night is filled with silence. Stephen wonders if he made the right choice in breaking the physician's oath. He only need remember the words of a friend.





	First do no harm

_I swear by Apollo Physician, by Asclepius, by Hygieia, by Panacea, and by all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will carry out, according to my ability and judgment, this oath and this indenture…_

“One.”

He condemned a man to death with that word. He deceived. He defiled sacred words. 

_“I will not hesitate…”_

Stephen is not a perfect man. He knows his flaws.

_“... to let either of you die.” ___

__Callousness is the result of time. Compassion fatigue. You give yourself emotional nerve blocks to protect others. That is what you tell yourself because the alternate answer reeks of selfishness._ _

__In the ship they argued over a calculated risk like stock brokers. Lives were the currency. The lives of the man and the boy and of nameless others. When reality caught up to his vision, he sought to buy time against the inevitable. Such a desperate action always proves to be a losing move when it comes to games of destiny. Every spell, every doge, every parry was filled with the knowledge that it was a pointless dance. When Death's avatar held him like a broken bird, he did what he swore he would not, for he was a liar blinded by lack of foresight when he told the man he would not hesitate._ _

___“There was no other way."_ _ _

__His heart is held in a box. He must keep it under lock and key lest it gets the best of him. It unsteadies his touch in the operation of fate. The others would would live. He did not mourn for them. He mourned for one._ _

__He has spilled enough human blood to cover both scarred, shaking hands. He’s killed other species in service to his own. He made a choice to break his word. Who will be next to fall prey to him, accidental or not? He used to have nightmares of killing patients. Officially in the records of his residency, his performance is flawless. It is as cold and as sterile as a narcissist's heart. He’s only ever intentionally lost the one. In a court of law that would be called murder. The stewardship of the title Doctor should not belong to a hypocrite._ _

_The man opposite of him, bloodied from an inescapable wound looks to him in askance. That wound killed him. Not here. In another line of fate, not this one. Stephen can no longer tell if his mind accepts what his eyes see._

_He did not remember who he was. There was no ‘he’ nor was there an ‘I’. Nothingness surrounded the consciousness that was Stephen Strange and swallowed him into itself. This is not suffering. It is the absence of it and joy alike. Without suffering there is no joy, without joy there is no suffering. Is it not better this way, the obliteration of both? That may be so, but reality is fragile and death all the more. He heard the Void speak to him. It spoke with the voice of his mentor:_

_Everything in the end becomes one. That part which is missing returns eternal. Every single breath breaths as one._

__He found a spark of himself in the nothing. The core of who he was. Is._ _

__“To bring deliverance from suffering and delusion…”_ _

_The ignorant man who commits murder does not know he kills himself. You did not know it at the time, Stephen, but the oath you took you took in service to something greater than you. The oath you took to do no harm. You harm yourself in thinking it was wrong. You are not alone. You carry us all with you. All of us, every...last...one..._

__“...And bring instead compassion and Enlightenment.”_ _

__Death means nothing. The condemned man lives with him, breaths every breath he does._ _

__He keeps the title Doctor. Without it he is a dangerous man._ _

_...Now if I carry out this oath, and break it not, may I gain forever reputation among all men for my life and for my art; but if I break it and forswear myself, may the opposite befall me._


End file.
